Thread by @DanielAlpert

MARCH 12th - keep that date in mind this morning. We will have lots to talk about regarding the #BLS employment situation report at 8:30am EDT. But remember that the test date for "jobs day" data is the 12th of the month being reported. And March 12 was before the lock downs.>>

>>Consequently, today's Non-farm Payroll data won't come anywhere near reflecting the reality of the #COVID19 pandemic impact.
Nevertheless, will be back at 8:30 and expect to see a material, if early, loss of front line low-wage/low-hours - see why, here: jobqualityindex.com

#BLS #NFP Payrolls decline by 701,000 with the unemployment rate at 4.4. This is just the tip of the iceberg as the reference date for the data is the week ending March 13th, before the social and economic lock downs. But really bad.>>

Private sector jobs fall by 713,000. As anticipated, goods producing not yet a factor, down "only" 54,000. But the service sector, particularly front-line, customer-facing, was destroyed with leisure and hospitality falling by 459,000.

The other low-wage, low-hours sectors that took a hit were Retail, down 49K, Administrative and Waste Services, down 61K, and even Healthcare (?) and Social Assistance, down 61K. Together with Leisure and Hospitality this is 88.4% of all the private sector job losses.

Now we get to the really squirrel-ly data in this report. AVERAGE hourly wages ROSE by 11 cents (0.4% m/m) but this was due to the eradication of all those low wage jobs. Hours fell, unsurprisingly, by 0.2.

More oddball data. The labor force fell by 1.6 million as people are not looking for work that they can't go to. So the unemployment rate, even though it rose by 9/10ths, is vastly understated. The employment population ration plummeted to 60.0 from 61.1.

U-6 Unemployment rises to 8.7%. and this is just a start.
I can't emphasize enough that today's data is based on the March 13th pay period - before the social and economic lock downs. We will see the full force of the #COVID19Pandemic in next month's employment print.

Getting early indications from the @jobqualityindex data team that a whopping 93%+ of the job losses were low-wage/low-hours jobs as the initial data clearly indicated. More on that and a graph in a few moments.

What we saw in #BLS print today was the #COVID19Pandemic attacking the front lines - the cannon-fodder in WWI terms - with easily discharged low-wage/low-hours workers being blown away. Next month we will see how deep into the rear-guard of the economy the crisis has penetrated.

And here's the #JQInstant graph for March 2020. 93.35% of the job losses were in sectors that offer weekly incomes below the average income of all production and non-supervisory jobs. I must say, when we created the www.jobqualityindex last year, never thought we would see this:

The U.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index declines to 79.27 from 79.43 in the prior month. This modest 0.20% m/m drop reflecting lags in data. We actually expect the index may rise in the short term reflecting the massive eradication of Low Quality employment (not a good thing).

The full @jobqualityindex Monthly Report will be out in about an hour. In the meantime, here is a preview:

The full U.S. Private Sector @JobQualityIndex Monthly Report for March is up on our site at:

d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/prosperousamer…

jobqualityindex.com